The Malik Report

Yahoo Sports’ Greg Wyshynski offered a superb summary of the general managers’ talk about possibly expanding video review to cover high-sticking penalties and waved-off goals, but as a Red Wings fan, I can only firmly plant my palm onto my forehead when reading what disciplinarian Colin Campbell had to say to Nicholas J. Cotsonika about what the NHL does and does not want to review:

Nicholas J. Cotsonika: Is it likely that you’ll go back to the managers in June with what specifics that may be broadened in video review?

Colin Campbell: “We had a discussion and there were some requests to expand video review. I told them they couldn’t be general in those requests and where do you want to expand it to? Right now I think we’ve played 1,080 games and we’ve probably had 5-8 situations where it’s ‘why don’t we call it how we think we see it instead of the view we need with the puck across the line?’ The managers had a little bit of feel for, ‘If you think it’s in, then call it in,’ and we don’t operate that way. There was some appetite to take video review a little further.”

Cotsonika: Is there a chance that a four-minute minor or goalie interference could be up for video review next year?

Campbell: “Yeah, the four-minute minor was our request because we’ve had situations where on video review it’s the other players stick and it’s a hard call on the ice. We said we can live with it for 82 games, but in the playoffs that’s a pretty big turnaround if you get the wrong call. The referees have supported us on that. They would like some help on that. That’s our plea in hockey operations. We threw that at the managers and that could get some traction in June.”

Cotsonika: What about goalie interference?

Campbell: “Goalie interference did not have any traction.”

So it’s four more years of Tomas Holmstrom’s shadow touching another goaltender and resulting in waved off goals. Oy yoy yoy…

And I disagree with pensfan29. Using video replay, the game announcers can always figure out whether there was goalie interference or not. There’s no reason why the officials could not do the same.

Posted by
MsRedWinger
from the State where Tigers roam in the Spring on 03/17/11 at 05:33 PM ET

Its a judgement call made during the course of the game. Whether or not a goal was scored isnt a judgement call. If it was all this bs about not seeing the puck even though its clearly in under the goalie etc, wouldnt exist.

You get to a point where the game should just be played in video replay mode for just about everything. As soon as you allow the “war room” to make discretionary calls you’re in trouble because it will be inconsistent with how the refs are calling the game on the ice. Do goaltender interfence penalties get reviewed if it doesn’t result in a goal? I’ve already seen too many times, where the refs aren’t even indicating goal or no goal on the ice so that they can go straight to the video review and let someone else make the call.

It takes the NHL, what seems like an eternity to determine if there was a “distinct” kicking motion, you would think something that is “distinct” it is clearly obvious, but it takes them forever. If it isn’t clear as day then it isn’t distinct so move on already, now we are going to start looking at even more discretionary areas for them to make a call?

If they want to add this option then they have to take out the mandatory TV timeouts for each game to compensate and show the play under review on the video screen at the game as well so that the fans that pay the big bucks to attend games aren’t bored to tears while waiting.

War room already effs up calls plenty during the course of a season trying not to make the refs look bad.
Give each bench boss one challenge flag like they do in the NFL to force a video review of a “intent to blow the whistle rule which lead directly to a goal” or other situations like that cause a goal to be allowed or disallowed by a very human zebra which more times than not is out of position to make the best call.

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